Why Am I Not Getting Better at Climbing? Five Reasons You're Stuck at the Same Grade
This is probably the most common question I get as a coach: why am I not improving at climbing despite everything I am putting in? You are constantly training, showing up every session, you give it all on your projects but you feel stuck. I get it, it’s frustrating, and we have all gone through it one way or another.
And let me be clear before we go any further: if you are here looking for a magic recipe, I'm afraid there isn't one. And in my experience the answer is almost never what the climber expects. Climbing plateaus are rarely about effort. The climbers I work with who have been stuck have almost always been working hard. The problem is usually not how much they are training. It is what they are training, why, and what they expect from it. Most often there is an obvious difference between what the problem feels like and what it actually is. These are the five most common reasons why I think climbers plateau, and an honest reflection behind each one.
1. It's Not Your Fitness
Why you're getting pumped on routes you can already do
Something I hear constantly from climbers who have stopped progressing: I'm not fit enough. Trust me I get it, but almost every time this is just not accurate.
And I understand why, it feels logical. You try the moves individually and they go. You link the route together and suddenly you are pumped, your arms collapse, your grip gives away and you fall. Getting pumped is the loudest physical reaction to continuous climbing and it is screaming at you. Something obviously failed. And when you fall and it's caused by something this physical and that immediate, it is only logical to blame it.
But here is what I keep coming back to. You can obviously do every move, so the problem is not that any individual move is too hard. The problem is that you are running out of gas before you get through them all.
Which raises a more useful question: why are you pumping that fast?
Very often the answer is not fitness. It starts with something more fundamental. Critical force is roughly the boundary at which your muscles can sustain effort without accumulating fatigue. Think of it like a ceiling. Everything below it is comfortable and controlled. Everything above it is unknown and rough, unpredictable… And eventually you pump and fall. And if your critical force is too low relative to what a route demands, you will pump on terrain that feels technically fine, because even the moves you know well are costing you more energy than they should.
This is why I think the obsession with endurance training in climbing can sometimes send you in the wrong direction. Research consistently shows that climbing performance is strongly related to maximum strength and force production. If individual moves are already close to your maximum, more mileage will not fix it. Getting stronger will. Even the smallest strength gain will drastically change the way a route feels. I have seen climbers considerably improve their strength and suddenly routes that used to pump them flat feel casual. Not because their endurance changed. Because the cost of each individual move dropped. Understanding this concept will do more for your climbing than any other promised magic recipe. And I'll be honest it did also take me a while to accept this myself, the pump was so real, and I was so sure about my fitness always letting me down, until I started getting stronger, and I saw the changes.
There is also something worth bringing out about why the fitness explanation is so appealing. I think, and I'm not afraid to say this out loud, that stating "I'm not fit enough" is an easier thing to sit with than "I'm not strong enough." Fitness feels like something you haven't worked on yet. Strength can feel like something closer to a definitive and fundamental issue. And sometimes it is easier to believe you just need more laps than it is to face the fact that your strength ceiling is the real problem.
Now by all means I'm not saying there is no fix. What I'm trying to say is that you should really assess where the fundamental problem is coming from and focus on improving what the real issue is.
I wrote about general strength in more depth here: Strength Training for Rock Climbers: Why It Matters More Than You Think. Have a read and understand a little further how fundamental this quality is.
You can do all the mileage you want. But if the moves are already at the edge of what your body can deal with comfortably, endurance work is not the answer.
2. Fear Is Costing You Grades
How anxiety affects your climbing performance at any level
Fear is one of the most underestimated physical factors in climbing performance. And it is the one most climbers talk about the least.
When your body perceives danger, your grip tightens, your breathing pattern changes, you get tense, and you fatigue faster. The route does not get harder. But the perception of it does. Fear makes you pump, and it does so well before you get a chance to top out or even enjoy the route.
A few things I think can be key to dealing with fear. Your belayer, talk to them. If you have a belayer that has given you a hard catch in the past or an unnecessarily long fall and you are not okay with that, you have the right to ask for a change. Education within ourselves, with respect and openness, is one of the most powerful resources to make our climbing a more enjoyable experience.
I have heard endless times people argue a hard catch by stating that their partner weighs less than them, so they blame the weight gap. And rather than dealing with the actual problem, they go round in circles avoiding it.
I have given soft catches to climbers thirty kilos lighter than me on long vertical walls and they have barely touched the wall. The weight difference is not the problem. Dynamic belaying is a skill, and education on this matters enormously. More slack does not equal a soft catch. Keep the slack in the system to a minimum and learn to give a dynamic catch. These small things, left unaddressed, quietly become bigger ones.
But here is the harder truth. No belayer removes the fear for you completely. It will help rationalise the outcomes of a fall but if the fear is there, you have to work on it deliberately.
The things that help, in my experience:
- Rational conversations about what is and is not actually dangerous at a given point on a route.
- Self-talk, before and during climbing.
- Building confidence through appropriate mileage, so movement becomes flow rather than a struggle.
- Gradual, intentional exposure to falling, so you don't have to deal with it all at once on your project.
- Talking openly to your climbing partners about it, because this is not a problem you have alone. In a way, everyone goes through it.
Choosing a good belayer is not a weakness and it is not rude. Rude is knowingly giving bad catches. Choosing a good belayer is good practice. It is okay to be scared. It does get easier. But it only gets easier if you face it and deliberately deal with it.
Obviously there is so much more to say on this, and if you want me to go into more depth on how I personally deal with fear on the wall, or what techniques I have used with athletes to help them overcome it, don't hesitate to reach out.
3. You're Training What You See, Not What You Need
Why copying professional climbers keeps you stuck
You watched a video of a professional climber doing a particular exercise. A specific protocol, a coordination drill, or a movement pattern you have never tried. And something clicks: that is exactly what I should be doing. Well, probably not…
This is one of the most common training mistakes I see, and one of the hardest to challenge, because the logic feels so convincing. If the best climbers do it, it definitely works. And it does work, for them, in their very unique and individual context, at their level, with their training history, physical baseline, and recovery capacities.
The question is whether it is what you specifically need right now. And the answer, most of the time, is no.
Obviously you will not be able to do half of the routines professional climbers do casually, but this does not turn them into priorities for you. This is something I come back to with almost every athlete I work with at some point. The fact that you struggle with something does not mean training it harder is the answer. Sometimes you just need time to adapt to a very basic exercise first. Sometimes it is about movement quality. Sometimes what looks like a weakness is a consequence of a completely different limitation.
The question I always want climbers to ask before they start any specific training drill is: why am I doing this? Not because someone impressive does it. Not because it looked hard and that felt motivating. But because there is a specific, honest reason it will help your climbing at this moment in your development. Always challenge your decisions and your coach's decisions, not for the sake of being difficult or contrary but for clarity and reassurance. This is what I mean when I say train with intention. Not to the specificity of the exercises. but to why you should be doing them.
4. Your Ego Won't Let You Train at Your Limit
The psychological reason climbers avoid the grades they should be doing
This one is harder to say out loud. But I think it matters more than most will admit.
I have coached many climbers who, if you watched them in a session, you would notice something. They would attempt routes and boulders far beyond their level, fail dramatically, and move on feeling somehow okay about it. But when it came to the route they genuinely had a chance on, the one they knew they could probably send, something would shift. They would hesitate, find excuses, rush through it, and fall unexpectedly. Not because the climbing was too hard, or they weren't good enough, but because they felt insecure about their climbing.
This is ego protecting itself. It is safer to fail on something impossible than to risk failing on something you should be able to do. At least the first one can be easily explained.
The result is that climbers spend too much time on climbs that are too far beyond their current level and avoid the precise stage where real progress happens: around the edge of what they can do, not at the edge of what they dream of.
I find that climbing with better climbers than you is one of the most effective ways to grow. Not to be put in your place, but because being in an environment where the standard is higher tends to raise your own standard quietly over time. It requires that you leave the version of yourself that needs to look good away from the sessions.
I have had this conversation with many athletes I have worked with. I have had it with myself too. And it gets easier. But it has to be faced and dealt with first.
5. You Have Sessions. You Don't Have a Plan.
The difference between training and just climbing regularly
Most climbers have sessions. Very few have a plan.
There is a real difference between showing up to climb regularly and training with structure, intention, and a clear understanding of what you are building toward. And after some time in development, that difference is everything.
Training will improve your capacity. It will help you pull harder, climb longer, and tolerate more load over time. After a year of systematic training with clear goals and the right intent, the holds and moves that feel unreasonable today will feel more reasonable. Not easy, but manageable. There is a significant difference between the two.
But here is something I want to be clear about. Training does not remove the feeling of committing to a move on a small foothold thirty-five metres off the ground in the middle of a runout. It does not change what it feels like to make a decisive move above a thin crash mat surrounded by boulders. That part is yours to deal with. The mental and emotional side of climbing is something you have to work on deliberately, and it deserves its own attention.
What training does is reduce the physical cost of the moves. And when the physical cost drops, everything else becomes a little easier to manage and rationalise.
Structure means knowing what phase of training you are in. It means understanding your recovery and readiness before loading hard. It means progressive overload with a plan, not just effort. Recovery and load management is what decides how much of your work actually lands. And your goals need to be specific enough that you can tell, from month to month, whether you are moving forward or just showing up.
Without that structure, hard work alone rarely builds in the way you want it to. And that is often the issue. Not commitment, not talent, not effort. Structure.
Final Thoughts
Most climbers who plateau are not training what they need. Because they are guessing, copying, avoiding, or misreading the warning signs.
If you are reading this, you are probably at a point where what you have always done has stopped returning what you were looking for. Where you are ready for something more specific, more deliberate, or some guidance maybe…? The starting point is always the same: assess what you lack. Not what is easiest to admit, or what you think you should be working on. What your climbing is really telling you it needs. Once you figure this out, you will know what to train.
One last thing. Enjoy training, enjoy climbing, have fun with the people you share it with. This will probably do as much for your climbing as everything I have written above.
If you want help figuring out exactly what that looks like for you, that is what I do. I would be delighted to work with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why am I not improving at climbing despite training regularly?
Most of the time the issue is not effort but direction. Climbers who train consistently without progressing are often training the wrong thing considering where they are in their climbing. The most common causes are missing the real weakness, avoiding the discomfort of actual limit training, or training without enough structure and reasoning behind it. Going climbing, or training often is important but is not enough.
How long does a climbing plateau last?
There is no fixed answer. A plateau can last months or years depending on what is causing it. If the underlying issue is addressed, such as a strength deficit, a fear pattern, a recurrent injury, or lack of structure, progress can happen relatively quickly. If the root cause stays unaddressed, the plateau can persist regardless of how much training is done.
How do I break through a climbing plateau?
Start with an honest assessment of what is limiting you, not what feels like the problem but what the evidence suggests. Are the individual moves too hard? Why do you get so pumped linking them? Sometimes this points to strength. Are you holding back on routes you know you should be doing? That points to ego or fear. Are you training without clear goals or structure? That points to planning. The answer changes depending on the individual.
What is the most common reason climbers plateau?
In my experience, misdiagnosis or simply being lost without structure. Most climbers blame fitness or endurance when the real issue is often that individual moves are too close to their maximum force output. More laps will not fix a strength problem.
Eder
Related
Strength Training for Rock Climbers: Why It Matters More Than You Think
Recovery for Climbers: How Sleep, Stress, and Lifestyle Shape Your Climbing
References
1. Balas, J., Gajdosik, J., Javorsky, T., Berta, P., and Feldmann, A. Measuring Critical Force in Sport Climbers: A Validation Study of the 4 min All-Out Test on Finger Flexors. European Journal of Applied Physiology (2024).
3. Bandura, A. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W. H. Freeman and Company (1997).